Today, I was able to pretty much finish the two marquetry designs for my Walnut bread boxes.

One loaf

Two loafs

Well, they’re almost finished. I plan to drop in the knife blades after I have the design inlaid into my Maple panel. If I knew more about what I was doing, I could probably cut it in all at once (see suggestion below). But I like to leave the marquetry proud of the surface and flatten the design with a router after it’s glued in. Since this can remove up to 1/32”, I’d probably cut through the manufactured Tiger Maple veneer.

I took a couple of process pictures to show how I gradually add to the picture, one piece at a time, taping them together with paper tape:

Next, I’ll tackle my pile of rough sawn Walnut. The tree that supplied the wood was pretty small, so there are lots of knots to cut around. For now, I’m going to go make a sandwich. Looking at that bread is making me hungry!

Although I’ve used shading with hot sand in the past, I recently gave it up, Shipwright. I would have my pieces just right and then when I tried to shade them, they shrunk on me!!! What am I doing wrong? I had a chance to spend a little time looking over your blog, and you obviously know what you’re doing. Beautiful stuff! I am pretty much learning as I go by trial and error, so any help would be appreciated.

Shrinkage depends on a lot of things like temp of the sand, how long the piece is in the sand, species, thickness and so on. Trial and error will get you a long way. If you do get shrinkage you can moisten the shaded pieces by patting them with wet fingers. That will often bring the shape / size back.Don’t abandon shading. It is half of the game. It gives depth and drama to pieces that otherwise would be plain. I don’t think this loaf of bread really needs shading though. As Mike says it looks quite 3D already.

Nice work.

-- Paul M ..............If God wanted us to have fiberglass boats he would have given us fiberglass trees. http://prmdesigns.com/